How can London boost British tourism?

Tourism Society members and guests met on Monday evening in the impressive surroundings of Visit London’s boardroom with views stretching from St Paul’s Cathedral to Tower Bridge, to discuss how London can best boost British Tourism.

Panellists included James Bidwell, CEO of Visit London, Bernard Donoghue, Head of Government & Public Affairs for VisitBritain, Richard Dickinson, CEO of East Midlands Tourism and Adrian Mahon representing Merlin Entertainments Group.

James Bidwell kicked off the proceedings with some startling statistics: Almost 50% of all overseas visitors to the UK visit London and London is the No.1 city destination in the world for international travel. 2006 was a record year for overseas visitors to London, the capital welcomed over 15 million overseas visitors, and London drives UK tourism – around 3 in 4 overseas visitors to Britain travel via London. James’ answer to how London can boost Britain’s tourism is to carry on delivering London as a world class destination.

The London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games were viewed by the panel as a pivotal point in the strategic timeframe for London’s tourism representing a huge scale of opportunity. Benefits from the 2012 win are appearing already with a good relationship being struck with China, and some exciting events coming up which are thought to have come about as a result of the 2012 win such as an NFL game (New York Giants vs Miami Dolphins) at the new Wembley Stadium which will be worth approximately £20 million for London’s economy.

Bernard Donoghue stated that the 2012 Olympics represents ‘a whole month’s worth of free advertising for the country’ and claimed that Britain needs to celebrate London more and understand the huge benefits it provides for Britain; London itself generates three times the visitor numbers of Australia so in answer to their recent ad campaign of ‘Where the Bloody Hell are you?’, the reply would appear to be London!

Negative issues raised included the confusion over the structure of Britain’s tourism industry, the fact that VisitBritain’s budget had declined in real terms by 15% over the last ten years, and that Britain is outspent by 47 others in promoting itself in the US and the negative perception of the ‘Londonisation’ of Britain held by some regions of the country as well as the perception of London as an expensive destination with low quality accommodation. However, Bernard stated that the regions of Britain are not intimidated by London which was a view backed by Paul Simpson of Marketing Manchester.

One particular fact that was news to many in the audience was that London has a statutory obligation to benefit the rest of the UK economy under the GLA act.

Richard Dickinson presented research results from a mini-survey of around 80 organisations he had conducted to show the regional perspective of how London can boost Britain’s tourism. Only 60% of those surveyed knew that the GLA had a statutory gateway role, although 75% agreed that this was a good thing. 96% of responses came back that the LDA and Visit London should work with the National Tourist Boards, RDAs and other relevant marketing consortia such as England’s North Country.

In terms of the sort of activity that should be undertaken, 83% thought that Visit London and the LDA should agree an overall strategy, and the vast majority thought they should also undertake specific marketing to extend visitors stay and encourage a stay in other parts of the country including day trips.

Adrian Mahon commented that the Tussauds Group, under the new ownership of Merlin Entertainment Group were already helping to spread visitors around the country with initiatives such as their annual pass which enables users to visit their attractions around the country as well as promoting a ‘Brit Rail Pass’ to visitors before they arrive in the country.

Comments from the discussion were that VisitBritain needs more funding to develop more of a coordination role to sort out the current confusion over the structure of Britain’s tourism industry and digital technology needs to be harnessed effectively to ensure that visitors to London have access to information on the other parts of Britain, which is something Visit London are working on. In order to maximise the low budget situation, VisitBritain needs to continue to be as creative, quirky and brave as possible in promoting Britain overseas.

Skills and training was another topic for discussion. The feeling was that if we are to maximise the opportunities from the London 2012 Olympics and in general, the welcome offered to visitors to London and Britain needs to be excellent in order to both persuade visitors to extend their stay and travel elsewhere! This needs to be achieved through further training and initiatives such as the People 1st skills passport.

One interesting suggestions for getting London 2012 visitors around Britain could be to create an ‘Olympic Pass’ to allow travel around Britain.

Working in partnership with the regions through VisitBritain was the main answer to the question ‘How can London Best Boost Britain’s Tourism?

For more information, visit Tourismsociety.org.